X3: Terran Conflict

This is for Albion prelude since it does not have its own forum and it requires this game I guess I have to post it here. Should be same answer anyway.

So I am pretty new, I did the Bankrupt start on Monday (today is Friday) I have about 6-8 million credits, I have been hijacking boron traders and running away from pirates. However I have been wanting to explore my surroundings a bit more here is where the problem starts:

I am still in the default Mamba I can take everything in my class and even some larger ships. I have about 4 plasma throwers. I took some smaller pirate ships (rajin or something like that) and spent a few hundred kay on them to get shields and weapons, then set them to protect me.

I did this because whenever I try to explore the bounty hunterst that follow the Bankrupt story line attack me, and there is usually 5-7 small ships, my plasma throwers have a hard time dealing with these (or at least I do) and my ships end up as space dust without scoring a single hit on the enemy ships, I have also tried drones.

My goal was to have my own fleet that I could micromanage, however my AI cant even handle crappy pirates, PLEASE tell me I can hire pilots or upgrade my AI so my npc ships learn how the hell to fly? How can I make my ships do something besides crash into each other or miss every single shot they fire?

I've not played Bankrupt Assassin or whatever, but I believe ti starts you at a harder combat ranking and thus you have harder ships than you would if you started with a different start. If you want to do some exploring and looking into other areas of the game, I'd suggest the Humble Merchant Start. You start with a Discovery (great basic scout ship) and a Mercury Trader (TS) that you can do mobile trading with while you explore the x-verse. Your combat and trade ranks start at 0 so you can do as little or as much as you want to level those areas up at your own leisure.

If I send a scout ship, to fight an enemy scout ship, mine will lose...every time...constantly. The actual combat ability of my fleet ships is useless. Can I upgrade their skill or AI level? Can I buy a pilot? Hire a merc? Something to make them not useless at combat

Do you have fight command software Mk1 and Mk2 on your ships? I am pretty sure you can't upgrade their fight skill or pilot rank (like you can with traders).

But generally the higher your fight rank in the game, the harder the enemies you face, thus your support ships may be underpowered to deal with increased attacking fleets. I sent in 4 Heavy Centaur prototypes to fight a xenon Q out of sector recently and they got slaughtered.

I'll be honest, the thing that stopped me from playing this game... was that my "co-pilots" or fleets were always ten times more potent OOS (Out of Sector). It was really immersion breaking and killed my motivation in the game, after spending plenty of hourse. Not cool that half my fleet could get wiped out by a docking order. Nevermind if an enemy fleet showed up. Sometimes my fighters would simply die through getting run over my a neutral capital ship flying in from a gate.